


Monsters Like Us

by Duck_Life



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode: s04e16 A, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mother-Son Relationship, Rape Aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 22:34:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9463184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: "First we'll beat Daryl to death, then we'll have the girl. Then the boy. Then we'll shoot you and we'll be square."The Claimers do everything they threatened and leave Michonne and Carl to cope in the aftermath.





	

In the space between one breath and the next, the sky gets light enough for them to see the grisly scene before them— Daryl, beaten black and blue, motionless where he slumps against the broken-down truck. Rick lies facedown in the dirt, arms at odd angles, a pool of blood haloed around his head.

Carl sits with his back to the truck, knees curled up to his chest, eyes on his father’s body. After the Claimers finally, finally left, Michonne tried to move closer to him, but she felt gutted and broken and blank, and besides that, didn’t know what she could do or say to Carl even if she sat right next to him. There aren’t words or gestures for this.

Now, Michonne takes a bottle of water from her bag and unscrews the cap with shaking fingers, tries to keep her lip from trembling when she takes a sip. They need to go. They need to go. She holds the bottle out to Carl but he shakes his head, so she moves toward him and holds the bottle out more insistently.

Carl takes the tiniest sip he can and then hands the bottle back to her. His eyes look dark and clouded, and the blood on his cheek is crusted over. Pulling out a bandana from her bag, Michonne dampens it with water and goes to clean off his face.

She’d give anything for a shower right now, scalding hot water, steam enveloping her and obscuring her vision. She wants to scrub off the bruises on her arms where they held her down, wants to wipe away everything that happened last night, wants to be _clean_. If she could crawl out of her skin right now, she would.

But it’s the end of the world, and what she has is a bandana and a bottle of water.

Once Carl’s face is clear of blood and dirt, she starts on her arms, her chin, her fingernails caked with dirt and blood and someone else’s skin. And then the two of them are as clean as they’re going to get, and they need to go.

“Carl,” she says softly, voice still hoarse from shouting. “C’mon.” She holds out a hand to him and he takes it, and the two of them stand together among the wreckage of their lives. Michonne has her bag and her sword, and Carl has his hat, and they start to walk away.

That’s when they hear the growling.

Daryl, Daryl with opaque eyes and a bloodied nose, walks on broken bones toward them, one hand out grasping, searching.

Michonne hears Carl holding his breath beside her. Daryl’s not breathing at all.

“I’m sorry,” she says, to Daryl, to Carl, to Rick. To herself. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Her katana flashes through the air and through Daryl’s head, and the dead body collapses to the ground.

She and Carl leave.

“We’re still going to Terminus,” Michonne confirms to him at one point as they pick their way along the railroad tracks. “There are people there. Good people. People like your dad.”

With his arms folded tightly against his chest, Carl marches on. “Okay.”

They used to play games on these tracks, they used to smile and laugh, and that was yesterday. That was only yesterday.

“I’m gonna go scout up ahead,” Carl tells her at one point, and he jogs through the edge of the woods until she can’t see him anymore.

And once he’s gone, Michonne doesn’t have anyone to put on a show for. She crashes to the ground, hands on her knees, head hanging down, and lets out a good sob. She can see Rick still, when she closes her eyes, she can see him on his knees with a gun to his head, his eyes huge when he turns to look at her. She can still hear him screaming, even louder than she did, _Stop it, stop this, leave them be_.

“Mike,” she whispers into the gray light, looking for her compass, for her ghost. She used to talk to him. Rick used to talk to Lori. “Rick.” She swallows. “I’m gonna take care of him. I promise you.”

But when she quickens her pace to catch up with Carl, she finds him face to face with a walker, grappling with it, his gun still in his holster. Michonne calls his name and then runs up behind the walker, slices down the top of its head and kicks it away. “Carl!”

“I’m okay,” he pants, his face white. “I’m okay.”

“No you’re not.” She sheaths her sword and pulls him toward her, two hands on his shoulders. “We’re not doing that, okay? We’re not dying. You and me, we’re going to make it. I promise.” She folds him in toward her, knowing it’s an empty promise. Her arms can’t protect him from the monsters, both dead and alive, but that doesn’t keep her from hugging him as tightly as she can.

They walk toward Terminus, Carl forcing down some beef jerky as they go after Michonne demands he eat. “When I told you about Andre,” she says suddenly, “you never asked how he died.”

Carl shrugs. “I knew why.”

“Yeah,” she says. “But the how’s important.” And she tells him everything. Getting back from the run, finding Mike and Terry. The things she turned them into. The thing _she_ turned into. “The walkers didn’t even notice me,” she says. “I was just another monster.”

Carl looks up at her with his big eyes and his pale face, and she’s forcibly reminded of Rick’s face last night, right before the shot rang out. After everything happened. “I was… trying,” Carl tells her. “To be the man my dad wanted me to be. Before… before. But I can’t do it.” He looks up at her and she wishes so hard she aches, wishes she could have stopped any of it. The Claimers, the attack on the prison, the damn apocalypse. “I’m just another monster, too.”

She stares at him for a long moment, and then she crushes him against her, shoving his hat upward. Rick is gone. Daryl is gone. Judith is gone and Andre is gone. “We’re not the monsters, Carl,” she says, remembering last night and trying to block it out at the same time. “They are. We’re not the monsters.”

They walk. They eat a little food and they drink a little water. Michonne’s mind races through the years, dredging up Mike and Terry and the chains, comparing them against Rick and Daryl. She could’ve sliced off Daryl’s jaw, his arms, tied him up…

Michonne shakes her head like she can shake the thought away. This is different. Different, because she doesn’t have to be a monster. Different, because she lost Andre but Carl is still right here.

She used to think there were only two ways to be, a monster or a victim. But they can be something else. They can be people.

She has to believe that, she thinks, as they approach a big brick building with “TERMINUS” lettered across it.

Carl reaches out and takes her hand.


End file.
